Naked dinner

Several hours after her plane landed, Candace was finally home. She could see Christmas decorations on the snow-sprinkled foursquare when the car pulled into the driveway. Putting her print and everything back into her defective suitcase (except for Janice's insurance card, returned to its owner), Candace had a very light load as she ran up the stairs of the porch - not really feeling anything on her bare feet at this point - while waiting for her father to unlock the door (they had changed locks since Candace went to school).

Candace placed her stuff on the floor and began to run up the light-varnished oak stairs, putting her cold hands on the banister.

"Uhh, honey, what do you think you're doing?" her Dad asked.

"Just going to my room to see what spare clothes I still have," Candace replied.

"Ummm..." Gerald and Janice exchanged nervous glances.

"How about we have dinner first?" Janice looked at Candace pleadingly.

"But mooomm..."

"Oh, don't worry sweetheart. It's not anything we haven't seen before, and I don't think you'll like what's happened to your bedroom. Besides, you look better this way!" her mother countered. That last comment made Candace very uncomfortable, but she thought better about objecting and sat her nude posterior on the plush red seats while the family had a candlelit dinner of prime rib, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, dinner rolls, whole-berry cranberry sauce (Candace couldn't stand the gelatinized kind), and of course butter.

Candace was a lot of things at the dinner table, but one thing she wasn't was physically cold, as she was mercifully seated pretty close to the radiator. After a while, she was almost able to forget that she was naked. Almost; her bare feet on the carpet, her napkin on her bare lap, and her bare back on her velvety chair were all too stark reminders of what seemed like she could never again have. Gerald and Janice were, for their part, snugly dressed in Christmas sweaters, Gerald wearing a pair of black slacks and Janice matching black tights.

"So how was college?" Gerald asked his daughter in a remarkable display of innocence and stoicism.

"It's been good. I'm preparing to study for my last semester. Pass the gravy, please," Candace replied as she herself passed some casserole down the line.

"That's good. What's your GPA looking like? Please pass the rolls."

"Oh, I'm well above a 3, I might even be near the Dean's List," Candace assured her family. Despite her disastrous suitcase blunder and terrible luck today, she was a smart kid.

"That's great!" Janice rejoiced, "uh, the meat, please."

"Yeah, I might even be cum laude," Candace rejoined. "Cum loudly?", she thought, "Oh god..."

"Well, that's wonderful," Gerald butted in with a mouthful of food still in his gullet. "You know," he said and then swallowed, "in my day, not that many people went to college. Now it seems like everyone is having at it, and you sound like one of the best! Please pass the cranberry sauce."

Candace glowed in this praise, but the inevitable tension of the situation started to take its toll. She needed to go upstairs, if nothing else just to give her loins some relief today.

"Thanks so much, Dad! May I be excused to go to my room?"

"Okay, dear," Janice cautioned, "but you're not gonna like what you see. Also, don't forget to clean up after yourself."

Candace groaned, but thanked her parents, took her plate and tossed it in the sink with such **** that it almost broke and might have cracked, and streaked upstairs to see what her parents did to her bedroom.